A post on the Games By Design Blog we missed when if first went up a couple of weeks ago discusses plans for an art upgrade for A Valley Without Wind, Arcen's recently released side-scroller. This will come as a free update to those who already own the game, and the post discusses other new features in the works for the upcoming version 1.3. This also involves an interesting exploration of the implications of Kickstarter funding, as Arcen's Christopher Park discusses the pros and cons of funding the art rework in this way, going into detail about why crowdsourcing would not have been the right way to handle this.

Well before that is coming you first have to actually say what you'd want changed I agree with your comment about exploring and pacing, but everyone has other ideas how to fix that. If you don't detail yours we will never get anything changed. (On the games forum, obviously)

Really I can't imagine that they had any reason for releasing the game with the original awful art-style, besides lack of funds. It was completely slammed in comments on Indie sites for all the previews months before the game was released.